The Sculptor
by onehundredvoices
Summary: With the return of an unsub who has been dormant for ten years takes the team to a small town where they are forced to face the truth about human nature, themselves and their feelings for each other
1. Chapter 1

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all critism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

Mostly M/G bit of Reid/OC

'A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.' Albert Camus.

**Chapter 1**

_The room was dark, it's always dark. The pain is so bad I want to die. Today is the first day that I actually begged to die. I always thought I'd be stronger than that, but I'm not. If dying is the only way to get it to end, then I'll take it. He keeps calling me a piece in his collection. A work of art. There's no one to miss me anyway...Oh God, he's coming back._

Eve Allison jerked awake from the dream, her cell phone buzzing. This was what sucked about being the deputy sheriff in this town, there was no such thing as a good nights sleep, the other thing...everyone knew she was the last victim of 'the sculptor' a man who tore eight women apart ten years ago, in this town. She had survived by fluke, when an electrical box had blown in the lock up he'd kept her in and someone had called the fire department. She had been found, but he never had been, and the call she'd spent her entire adult life waiting for. The call that told her he was back.

The girl hung from the meat hook by her hands, bound in duct tape, her eyes and mouth covered in the same material, beside her hung a drip, pumping just the right of ketamine into her system to keep her still, but awake and feeling incredible pain.

"My angel, my eighth angel, you will make a beautiful addition." The man murmured, uncovering her eyes so she saw his masked face, and the scalpel as it flashed towards her skin, the drug making it impossible to even scream, let alone move. After ten years the Sculptor was back.


	2. Chapter 2

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

"It is my feeling that Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth."  
><strong>Francois Rabelais<strong> 

**Chapter 2**

"Our unsub is a white male aged between forty and fifty, probably local and very controlled if he has held his urges in check after a rapid fall into the murder of seven girls in 2001. The case was cold until eight nights ago when seventeen year old Anna Wensley went missing after a party in Montpelier, Vermont . She was found yesterday, with a series of designs cut into her body, mostly freehand, but with a large celtic cross across her back. The body was dumped off a side road on the way into town. The unsub wasn't shy about having her found." Aaron Hotchner indicated the images on the screen as he talked. The first was of a young girl, hair dark and long, smiling for her school picture. The next was of her mutilated body, first at the dump site, so torn up it barely looked human, just like a lump of meat, the next were a set, showing the designs on her skin, the ligature and needle marks on her arms and legs. "From what the crime scene reports tell us, he wore a mask of some kind, and the fibres that were found show he was using duct tape to bind her, and there was ketamine in the victims bloodstream."

"Not that this isn't an interesting case, but with only one girl dead is it really one for us?" Derek Morgan asked softly. He was always up for work, but one kill, however intricate, wasn't really a full on BAU case.

JJ looked at Hotch who nodded at her to continue. "Ten years ago around two and a half years before the formation of the BAU, the same town suffered seven murders over the course of nearly two months, each girl was missing for a week before being found dumped in a public place, with the same designs carved into their skin. They exactly matched the killing yesterday, until the eighth victim, seventeen year old Eve Allison broke his pattern. She was missing for ten days, before being found alive following a small electrical fire in a storage room outside town...Meaning this could well be his ninth victim and on his way to picking up his tenth."

Penelope Garcia spoke next, trying to keep her tone even. In spite of her years in the job, pictures like the ones on the screen bothered her, even more so as the cold case photos came up. "My research shows a town with a population of less than seven thousand, and the limited information shows we must be looking for a local, a new person or family would have stood out, and there weren't any, ten years ago or now..." Morgan looked at her, quietly concerned at her tone of voice, which she deliberately strengthened as she went on. "...and we have a problem, there was a massive leak in the local police department ten years ago...someone released a detailed book, which means we have nothing to help us narrow down a copycat."

"If we have a survivor, and the unsub is someone who lives in the local area, how come we only know he's a white male, and not even an age?" Reid asked, trying to line everything up in his busy head.

"He wore a black latex mask, so all she saw was his hands, and she wasn't able to recognise his voice, being heavily drugged throughout." JJ replied. "There's another thing you need to know...Eve Allison is a cop these days, a cop in the department we're going to."

"Is that a good idea, the emotional trauma alone could be enough to cause massive misinterpretation of any evidence we find?" Reid murmured. He looked at the photo of Eve Allison at seventeen, a pretty girl with dyed blonde hair and wide innocent brown eyes, wondering how the experience would have changed her, robbed her of her innocence.

"She's going to be there and that's the end of it." Hotch murmured. "As will Garcia, the place is pretty much cut off from the tech we need especially at this time of year...Eve has offered her home as a base, so we'll be staying there, be prepared to bunk in together again...Wheels up in two hours." Garcia glanced at Morgan, catching the ghost of a grin on his face.


	3. Chapter 3

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

Beginning of our little G/M

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  
><strong>Anatole France<strong> 

**Chapter 3**

Garcia peered out of the SUV, from her place beside a grumpy Morgan. "You shouldn't be so cranky my knight, it's so pretty here."

"You're discounting the serial killer Baby Girl." Derek murmured, looking fondly at his best friend, she was the only person who could really see the beauty in murderville. Rossi and Hotch were in the back with the case files from the cold case spread out on the seat between them, but to Morgan there was no one else in the car but Garcia, her blonde hair tipped with bright pink, full lips bright and red, heels replaced with glittery purple doc martens they'd swung by her apartment to pick up 'for mountain climbing'. He was glad she was here, even over the phone she made him smile, but having her close made him happier, and increasingly more confused.

It had begun when Garcia had started dating Kevin Lynch. Morgan had been surprised at his jealousy and it had forced him to withdraw from her. The ending of that relationship had drawn them back together, but in a different way and now he was trying to hold down the desire to tell her...or just lean across the seat and show her, but she was his best friend, and he was so scared of ruining that.

Eventually the team pulled up outside the towns little sheriffs office, which seemed barely big enough to hold the whole team. Standing to greet them was the Sheriff himself, a broad, well built man in his mid thirties, his hat jammed tight on his head, a lightly sheepish expression on his stubbled face, beside him was a young woman, with cynical brown eyes and hair dyed jet black, the only sections of her skin showing were her face, and her hands, currently folded across her chest, who Reid was pretty sure was the most beautiful woman in the world.

Hotch alighted from the car first, even as Morgan turned to take Garcia's hand on the pretence of helping her out of the high car, earning a raised eyebrow from Rossi.

"Agent Hotchner Bau." Hotch offered his hand to the sheriff, the sheriff took his hand and shook it.

"Sheriff Humphries...Luke, thank you for coming" The sheriff murmured, offering a crooked half smile to the team as Hotch moved to shake the woman's hand.

"Eve Allison...I'm the deputy" She murmured. The hand she offered to Hotch was intricately scarred. Eve Allison was victim number eight, the survivor, and she had a look in her eyes that told anyone who cared to look she had a pretty huge score to settle


	4. Chapter 4

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

Really short chapter, but I wanted to put one out there before I got kidnapped by the family for festivus.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

**Chapter 4**

The team pulled up outside the Allison house, smiling as she saw it, it was clad in dark brown wood, though some of the wood was fading and chipped as if it had lacked someone to work on it for a while, and the garden was given over to growing vegetables, with a few patches of neglected flowers and a tiny, yellowish lawn. Eve shrugged as they got out of the SUV's aware from previous comments by members of the community that the well maintained home that she had once shared with her family had gone to the dogs. "My daddy used to do the maintenance, but then he died and with my brothers away in school, I have no time to do anything."

Eve led the way inside, into a completely different vibe, one that made Garcia want to squeal with joy, the walls were hung with artwork from old films with a particular leaning towards Katherine and Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Munroe, as if she'd eradicated any family from the place, like it hurt to much for it to still be the same place it was when her parents were still alive. Her father had had a heart attack three weeks after the release of the book and cancer had claimed her mother a year ago, both of her brothers were away at school, and her sister...no longer existed as far as she was concerned.

"There's four bedrooms upstairs other than mine, mine's pretty obvious, it's the one that's lived in, fight for the others, I'm gonna go make sure I have enough in to get you all fed and watered." Eve wandered in the direction of the kitchen. "And by the way...all the beds are doubles and there's only one bathroom...have fun choosing." She turned and winked at the team.

In the end it turned out pretty simply, JJ and Prentis shared one room, Hotch and Reid another, Rossi managed to Italian his way into spreading out on one to himself and Morgan and Garcia grabbed the last.

"I'll sleep on the floor again." Morgan murmured.

"In the mountains in December, I'll cope with your snoring." Garcia replied, laughing.


	5. Chapter 5

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

And I realise I'm rubbish and I missed the quote on chapter 4...I shall find and add one later

A bit of a Reid O/C moment, opinions on them very welcome

"A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience."  
><strong>Wallis Simpson<strong> 

**Chapter 5**

Reid was first back downstairs, wandering down and following the sound of music into the kitchen, walking in on Eve quietly singing along to the radio on the counter. He got the feeling she did everything quietly these days. When he'd looked into her eyes on the first meeting he'd seen nothing going on behind them, not in the sense of the psychopaths he'd met, but no joy and no life, like this guy really had killed her ten years before. Maybe catching whoever had killed the girl this time would help, but he doubted it. She wasn't like any survivor he remembered meeting, she seemed pissed off that this unsub was back than scared. "Did anyone tell you Garcia doesn't eat meat?" Reid asked softly.

"No, thanks. I have some Quorn in because of my brothers girlfriend, I'll separate some of the sauce off now, I was just about to drop the braised beef in, so you caught me just in time." Eve moved to the freezer and seized the vegetarian steaks, in a little polythene bag. She smashed the steak into bits and ladled some of the sauce into a smaller pan, dropping the pieces into that and some braised beef steak into the other, aware of Reid's eyes on her the whole time. "I'm pretty sure you're not trying to find out the recipe to my Momma's quick casserole...you're Agent Reid right? So why are you standing there staring at me?"

"I'm not...I just...We just...I don't get to meet very many survivors, in the long term I mean, we meet plenty straight after and in the following weeks because of cases going to court, but not after ten years..." Reid stuttered, trying not to blush.

"I'm not..." Eve slammed out of the kitchen through the back door onto the porch, and Reid swallowed and inched out after her.

"I'm sorry." He murmured, pitching his voice low, watching her as she held her cigarette between shaking fingers. He was surprised to see her smoking, but he was concentrating on her shaking hands.

"I just...I'm not that girl any more you know...the preppy little girl who was a cheerleader and thought she knew everything about everything...And if I'm not her, then I'm not a survivor, because it happened to someone else." Eve muttered.

"But if it happened to someone else, then there's no reason to be standing out here shaking." Reid replied.

"I'm not crazy Dr Reid...I do know it happened to me, it just makes it easier to keep breathing in and out if I pretend that I'm not damaged goods...Now, if you could go and grab your team, it'll only be five minutes until dinner's done." Eve offered him a wobbly smile.

"If you want...You could call me Spencer...and we're all damaged goods." Reid turned to head indoors.


	6. Chapter 6

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.  
><strong>Elbert Hubbard<strong> 

**Chapter 6**

Dinner had been good, Eve was used to knocking up decent food for a number of people at short notice. Her brothers used to drop by with half the football team while they were still in school, and as soon as her mother had gotten sick the preparation had fallen to her, with her sister being long gone by then, so feeding the agents was a minor issue.

Sitting with the case notes from the old and new murders spread out across the now clear dining table. "There's no pattern, he took a different race, age, demographic background, even hair colour through every single girl." Rossi muttered, running his hands across the notes as if it would make the profile jump out at him, even though it hadn't in the last three hours.

"The only ties are gender." Reid murmured

"And hair dye...the post mortems on all of them said they had dyed hair." Garcia said shakily, her hand finding Derek's under the table. She was used to seeing these things on her screen, but there was a layer of protection between her and the crimes. Even when she'd been out to towns with the team she'd only sat in the same room as one victim and she hadn't known the kid was a victim then.

"And this book doesn't help." Hotch said. "It gives anyone who wants it a full breakdown of the crime, with pictures if they want to copy the designs, so perhaps we need to look at this as a completely separate crime. The original was attributed to the local librarian who was killed in an arson attack on the building, books on veterinary medication, Celtic design and tattoo art, so we have to look at this as an individual crime, did the victim have any enemies, boyfriend problems, family issues?"

"Her name was Sarah Mendleson, not the victim, she was a good kid, she worked hard, a nicer kid than I was at that age...And the librarian was a good man, they just treated him like an outsider because he hadn't been here long...I talked with him, it wasn't the same voice, they just wanted the crime to be gone." Eve muttered. She moved to look at the photos of the other girls, pictures she'd looked at about a thousand times. "Rebeckah Anderson, Anna South, Miranda Holland, Tanya Ellis, Elise Williams, Jayne Andrews, Sara Beauchamp..." She indicated the older crime photos. "They were alive, in my high school year, they were people...and they got swept under the rug by the police department, so that we weren't the little town with the serial killer on the loose, even if we did get ghouls for a while."

"They won't be swept under the rug any more...and we'll catch him" Prentiss said softly, watching the younger woman, her anger barely contained, the scarred fists clenching.

"I r-ran checks on anyone who's part of the community who have been in and out of jail over the last ten years to explain the gap, I can't find anything." Garcia murmured. "A few people have been in or come out of prison, but not for the right time periods."

"Then we have to figure out why he stopped, and what's triggered him again." Hotch responded. "So we can stop him."

"We only have a couple of days left until he takes a new girl if his pattern is the same as before." JJ pointed out, she'd barely finished the sentence when the teams phones began to go off.

"Not a couple of days." Hotch responded as he ended the call from Luke. "Lisa Eddleson hasn't returned from a party.


	7. Chapter 7

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

I know the last chapters quote didn't fit, can anyone find me a better one?

Even at our birth, death does but stand aside a little. And every day he looks towards us and muses somewhat to himself whether that day or the next he will draw nigh.  
><strong>Robert Bolt<strong> 

**Chapter 7**

Eve had been to the homes of parents with missing and murdered children before, delivered death messages, with a gentle voice and genuine sympathy, but this was totally different, with the team split up, she had taken Reid with her to talk with the parents of the missing girl, while Hotch and Prentiss turned her life upside down, starting with her bedroom, to try and glean some clue as to why she was chosen by this man, compare her life to the others...to Eve's and all Eve could think when she looked at these parents was that it was her fault, that she could have stopped this man if only have remembered more.

JJ was talking to the local press to try and hold the story. This man felt he was an artist, working in skin and bone and blood, drawing attention to him wasn't going to help anyone, least of all the girl he had.

Rossi was out talking with the shaken townspeople, trying to understand the demographs and feeling of the town from an outside perspective, not coloured by growing up in it, or nearly being killed in it.

Morgan was sitting in Eve's living room reading the book about the crimes, ten feet away from Garcia, who was wired for sound. The night before had promised to be awkward for both, but the call had led to no sleep for anyone, and now the group as a whole, everyone running on coffee and stress.

Early investigations had shown the girl was at least five hours late for her curfew when her parents had reported her missing, which by Eve's reckoning, had her stripped naked, hung up and he would have put her onto the ketamine saline mix drip, knocking her out enough for him to work.

This was a whole new level for the team, an hour by hour blow by blow account of what was happening to that girl, as it was happening, and it was screwing with all of their minds even more than normal.

"Should we really be here, I mean, should Eve be part of this? She was a mess before they left to talk to the parents, maybe Horch should, you know, try to talk her off the case until we catch this guy?" Garcia asked softly.

"Baby Girl, I don't think anything is gonna get her off this case, or make Reid let her go." Morgan nodded out of the window as the two of them got out of the SUV with Reid supporting the town deputy.


	8. Chapter 8

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

Apologies for taking so long, chest infection of doom had eaten my muse

**Chapter 8**

Sleep had eventually called out to the whole team, with Morgan waking Garcia up to head to their shared bedroom after she'd eventually slumped, worn out across her keyboard. As they hit the room Garcia turned to Morgan, not quite meeting his eyes. "Will you...gimmie a minute to get changed?"

"Baby Girl I've seen it all before." Morgan teased

"Not of mine you haven't."

"Maybe I want to."

Garcia mock growled at him and shut the door in his face before letting the blush that had been building in her sparkly doc martins spread up her body to her face, while Morgan stood with his palm pressed against the old wood of the door, as if somehow he could make it disappear if he just thought hard enough. Part of him screamed that this was Garcia, his best friend. The girl who had surpassed all others for the last seven years, getting naked on the other side of an unlocked wooden door. All he had to do was push it open and she'd be there. Then there was the fear that in doing that he would reduce her to 'just a girl'. He wasn't good at keeping those in his life, and he needed her in his life, to keep him sane and human. So no matter how much he wanted to open that door, he wouldn't.

"Ready Angelfish." Garcia called, grinning at him as he entered the room a second later. "So ya didn't go far huh?"

He looked at her, already in bed in her yummy sushi pyjamas, and he could bet fuzzy socks to guard against the mountain cold. "Didn't you hear, there's a serial killer on the loose. I have to keep my baby girl safe." He sat on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes, aware of Garcia's eyes on him as he stripped off his shirt and changed into sweats to sleep in, leaving his chest bare.

Garcia battled not to look at him as he changed. Yes, she wanted him, she always had and having him so close and so goddamn near to naked made her want to jump out of bed and drag him down with her. The thing was she knew he would never want her. The girls he went for tended to be whip thin and model beautiful, not kooky and curvy...not her.

Morgan slid into bed beside her ans she smiled. "You gonna keep me safe from my nightmares Hot Stuff?"

"From anything Baby Girl...Now get some rest, big old day tomorrow"


	9. Chapter 9

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

"For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."  
><strong>Judy Garland<strong> 

**Chapter 9**

Eve watched as the agents floated off to bed. She understood why they needed to sleep, they'd flown across timezones to get here and had been up nearly eighteen hours while they were in the town. Eve would have been worn out too, in fact she was, but there was no way she could sleep, she was too wired. With each passing minute she could see what that man was doing to the poor girl he had taken, and it had made her sick to her stomach more than once. She felt she'd covered pretty well, running to the bathroom, then returning with cleaned teeth and a tray of coffee and cookies to keep the agents going, but now, alone in the dark, staring at what the agents had put together so far, she lost the the front, shaking as she turned the autopsy and crime scene photos over in her hands, studiously ignoring her own pictures and the fact that she was weeping silently as she looked at them.

Upstairs Dr Reid woke from a nightmare, not quite the usual one, but about the current case, perhaps due to the fact that Eve had been able to give them an hour by hour breakdown of how the unsub was likely to be treating the girl he had now. How he had treated her. It made it so much more real that photographs and words on the page, watching someone talk about it, with deep pain in their eyes occasionally breaking away to throw up and returning, pretending she was fine. No one was that tough, and Reid was pretty sure she was close to breaking. Eventually he had headed downstairs, stepping over Hotch who was sleeping on an air bed on the floor, looking for solace and peace. He had found Eve.

"Hello" He said softly, watching her in the light of Garcia's laptop.

"Hey, can't sleep either?" Eve murmured.

"Hotch snores" Reid lied softly, moving to sit beside her on the sofa. "What are you still doing up?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm never going to sleep again." The words came to her lips unthinkingly. "I mean, not until this guy is caught."

"Eve, you need to rest...or to not be on this case...it's very unusual that we would keep someone so close to the original case around."

"I can't leave this, for a start, you're living here until this is done and for a second...I can't...I have to catch this guy, because if I don't, what did I survive for?"

Reid sighed, and without thinking, covered her hand with his. "Never think that...you survived, and decided to become a cop, you beat this guy."

"No I didn't...he's marked me, and it's never going to changed, they'll fade but never disappear, so he's part of me forever, on my skin, in my head, robbing me of a real future...I mean look at me, I'm a mess, and my head's even worse...If I'm with you when you catch him, maybe it'll fix me...I need it to fix me." Eve's words came quickly and she avoided his eyes as she spoke, the first tears she'd cried darkening the fabric of her jeans as they fell.

"You don't need fixing, you just need to let yourself heal, and the first time I met you, I didn't notice the scars, I just thought you were beautiful." Reid murmured, before realising what he'd said, and that he was still holding her hand. "We should go to bed...I mean...I should go to bed...and so should you." He stuttered and blushed, dropping her hand like he'd been bitten.

"Mmm, you're right." Eve smiled and his blush and leaned forward to kiss his cheek. "Thank you Spencer.


	10. Chapter 10

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

Woo over 20 reviews for my first nine chapters...I'm glad, thank you to you all, if there's anything anyone wants to see here PM and I will see if I can get it in.

Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.  
><strong>B. R. Hayden<strong> 

**Chapter 10**

Emily had been reading through the files since she'd got up just before dawn and had noticed something glaring in Eve's. When the deputy had woken up Emily had been forced to ask the exhausted woman.

"Eve, who is Chase Andrews?"

"He was my boyfriend, ten years ago, he left me after the attack because...because I refused to sleep with him...I was ashamed...and then after the book came out, there were things in there, personal things...He'd been selling what I told him to the man who wrote the book...He'd also been screwing my twin sister...who he is now married to...and he kept on at me trying to drive me crazy even after he married her...I had to destroy his dream to be a cop when I had to take out a restraining order, he stalked me, killed our family pets, threatened to kill me and my damn sister still married him, which is why the family don't speak to her any more, is that the answer you were after, and why did you need to know about him?"

"Because he was the last person to see the most recent two victims alive and was mentioned in your file...The file of the only survivor...Happily above suspicion as the loving boyfriend."

"He didn't do this, at least not ten years ago, I didn't know the voice...but then...Oh God...Ruth, you need to check on my sister." There was pure terror in her voice, a terror that said she hadn't stopped loving her sister for a second, and that she thought that Chase was crazy enough to do this, even back then.

That terror was what had the team moving, leaving only Garcia and Eve in the house. Eve paced while Garcia worked, neither of them noticing the tiny sound of the back door being opened. By the time they realised there was someone else in the house, Garcia had been knocked out, given an blow to the back of the head as Eve faced the window. Eve turned at the sound of the blow, wood hitting bone.

Eve turned, her eyes landing on a familiar face. "What the hell are you doing here?" She demanded, voice shaking.

"Leaving a message."


	11. Chapter 11

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing.

This one will be short, and will give my readers the chance to get involved, by voting on PM, details will follow at the end of the chapter.

"Every tomorrow has two handles. We can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith."  
><strong>Henry Ward Beecher<strong> 

**Chapter 11**

"So he wasn't there and she hasn't seen him for over a week, it could pin him as our guy if she'd just tell us where to look for him." Morgan muttered as they pulled up outside Eve's , irritated at the woman who wouldn't help the team to catch this man.

"Why is the front door open?" Reid asked softly as they got out of the SUV's. They moved into the house, aware of the iron tang smell of blood in the air.

"Garcia..." Morgan called. "Eve" There was a gurgling noise from the other room and Reid moved ahead of the rest of the team with his gun drawn. When he walked into the living room, he saw devastation, the room was trashed and in the centre was Eve, in a pool of blood, struggling to breathe.

Reid dropped to his knees beside her, brushing the hair off her face, where it had stuck, matted in blood. "Eve."

"Garcia...they took her."

"They?"

"Two of them, Chase and the bookman." Her eyes fluttered closed.

"No Eve, you can't sleep...you can't leave me..."

A/N- OK and this is the vote, does she die or doesn't she...tell me my pretties. I'm asking that you tell me in PM so it's left a surprise


	12. Chapter 12

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in. A few chapters will be rated M, but will be edited here. I will mention on the top of the chapter if it is M and give a link to the unedited versions held on my personal insanejournal to anyone who wants them, ask me in PM. I will credit any ideas I use.

Any suggestions on direction or plot ideas will be appreciated and credited and there will be a direct vote on a later chapter as to which way readers want it to go.

And a direct plea to my readers, if you're favouriting or following the story, please tell me why, the reviews help me to keep writing

Woo over 30 reviews for my first eleven chapters...I'm glad, thank you to you all, if there's anything anyone wants to see here PM and I will see if I can get it in.

The vote is closed at 5-1, want to find out which way it went...better read on and find out. To the person who wanted the other outcomes, I will be writing at least one alt version, eventually, I may possibly even write versions that offer up both alternatives you wanted.

Thank you to Jediyauk for all the fabulous medicalese in the chapter. You still have a few days to vote while I write Chapter 13.

Chapter 12

Morgan couldn't even think, all he could do was pace, anxiety overwhelming him. Reid had left with the badly injured Eve, but Morgan was ashamed to think that all he had wanted to do was shake her awake and demand to know where they could have taken Garcia.

Hotch was trying to keep him calm, but all he could think of was his Baby Girl, taken away by strangers and being hurt, maybe even killed. It made him want to throw up, to punch something, to do something, anything.

Hotch was sitting in front of Garcia's computer, which had been knocked off the table in the fight, but was thankfully still working, in spite of a crack in the screen. Garcia would have been so angry about it if she'd been there. "We know Garcia was looking at places these women could have been held, the unit that Eve was held in were closed after the last murders." Hotch's brow furrowed as he moved through Garcia's unique and complex system. "There was a hotel, abandoned in the woods at the bottom of the mountain following the murders, when a touring company withdrew following the bad press in the town...we just need to find out exactly where."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Reid was sitting, waiting, he felt like he'd been waiting forever. Eve's eyes had opened in the ambulance and she'd looked at him, smiled and lifted her hand to him, the tips of her fingers brushing his face before her eyes rolled back in her head, heralding the beginning of a fit. Her body arched and shook as it battled to stay alive, the monitors showing a flatline.

"Eve?" Reid dropped her hand as the paramedic moved to start compressions.

"She's in cardiac arrest."

"What's our ETA?" The other paramedic asked.

"We're practically there... not even a minute," the driver shot back over his shoulder.

"Best tell them we have a code blue."

"Can you help her?"

The paramedic, that had spoken to the driver, looked at Reid. "We're trying. Once we get her to the hospital, they'll take care of her."

"What then?"

"They'll work to stabilise her before sending her up for surgery."

"She lost a lot of blood...and...we'll need to talk to her as soon as we can."

"She won't be doing any talking for a while."

"She told us something about the murders...we need to know...I need to know...is she going to die?"

The paramedic met his gaze. "I honestly can't say but she will have a far better chance once we get her in the hands of the docs. And as for the other thing... you'll just have to wait."

Reid shook his head, needing facts, figures and reality to cling to, not chances and hope. "What are her chances?"

"Ask the docs." The response was shot back, as the paramedic moved to the back of the rig as the driver announced that they were there.

Reid stepped back to let them unload Eve, his head whirring, if she knew where they were, they needed her to get Garcia back before the unsubs killed her...and he needed her...even if he couldn't quite understand why.

"What we got?" One of the doctors, an attending, asked.

"Female, 27, stab wounds to back and abdomen... two and two... lost a lot of blood on scene and went into cardiac arrest on route," the paramediac, that had been talking to Reid, reeled off.

"How long?"

"About a minute, maybe two."

The doctor nodded. "Ok, we've got it from here." As he spoke, a nurse took over breathing, while a resident started compressions. "Lets get her into Trauma and get some O-neg hooked up, and EKG."

"I...where can I wait?" Reid stuttered

"As long as you keep out of the way, you can wait just inside or outside the trauma room, if you want? Or someone can take you to the family room?" A nurse said softly.

"I'll wait outside...in the room..." Reid muttered. "I'm not her family."

"Ok. I'll get someone else to show you to it.. they need me in there," she replied, offering him a sympathetic look and then, after stopping to talk to another nurse, moved to go into the trauma room, the shouted orders, stats and machinery noises floating out into the corridor before become muted once more as the doors swung closed.

Reid shuffled from foot to foot, running his hands through his hair. Now what did he do? Did he wait, or go back, to where Eve's blood was soaking into the carpet. He stared down at his hands, covered in her blood, drying rusty.

"Come on honey... lets get you somewhere you can get cleaned up," the kindly voice of an older nurse said from his side, the same sympathetic look upon her face as had been present on her younger colleague.

"Is she going to die?"

"I don't know..." the nurse began.

Just then the doors to the trauma room opened again, as a surgeon rushed in after being paged down.

"...crap... V-Fib!" a voice from inside shouted.

"Paddles! Clear!"

The doors swung closed once more.


	13. Chapter 13

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in.

Sorry it's been ages I've been finishing papers for school and catching another lovely chest infection, so work, study, sleep and repeat. I promise chapter 14 won't take so long.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.  
><span><strong>Maya Angelou<strong>

**Chapter 13**

For a while he had stood looking at the doors, frozen. He had just recovered from Emily's 'death' and was not ready to say goodbye for real to someone he was just beginning to develop a relationship with. Anyone else would begin to wonder about fairness, Reid simply plotted the statistical possibility that Eve and Garcia would not survive the day in his head. The chances were not good. He had left the hospital after a few minutes of staring, calling the team to see if they had found anything that could help them reunify their family.

The abandoned hotel structure in the woods that Garcia had found before her kidnap had come as a welcome surprise, but with no directions or co ordinates forthcoming, it didn't give them much. Eve had been the person closest to them with local knowledge and there was no guarantee she'd make it until morning.

Eventually Reid had turned and gone back into the building, half expecting to be asked to identify the body of the deputy. The idea made his chest hurt, a strange tightness that he struggled to understand. He missed the presence of the others, who understood him and calmed him, but here he was, alone.

His first port of call was resus and the sense of panic when he found them treating an elderly man, and Eve was nowhere to be seen. He sought the face of the nurse that had offered to walk him to the relatives room. "My...friend...Eve Allison...Where is she?"

"She's OK...or as OK as she can be, she's been taken to the recovery room, give it twenty minutes or so and she'll be moved to the acute care ward, you can go sit with her." The nurse replied, giving Reid a tight smile. That had been an hour ago, and Reid now sat, watching Eve. She was breathing on her own, which he knew was a good thing. A couple of times he had moved to hold her hand, but had faltered at the last second and now sat, his fingers less than a centimetre from hers watching her breathe, eyes tracing the scar designs he could see. Reid was so deep in thought that the voice from behind him made him jump enough that he actually touched Eve.

"I had to come now...the boys will be here by the morning and they won't let me anywhere near her." Ruth Andrews stood behind Reid, watching her sister. She was the antithesis of Eve, the curves and attitude of the latter versus the frightened, skinny woman standing behind him. Reid would have placed her at least five years older than Eve, rather than her twin.

"You know he did this, don't you?" Reid murmured.

"I know…he did all of it…not ten years ago…and not on his own this time…you know, she said that she would help me to leave him, after he beat me the first time…every time, but I was so pig headed, so sure that even after so long I could find something, anything, that could change him and prove her wrong…and then it seemed like I'd told her that so often I couldn't leave him, like the girl who cried wolf."

"It was a boy who cried wolf…there's a girl somewhere, and my friend, both of whom I want to believe are still alive, where would he take them?"

"Who did she mean, the bookman?" Hotch thought aloud as the team desperately sought some way to find Garcia and the unsubs, now they knew there were two.

"What if it's the man who wrote the book about the killings, Morgan Jones? When we read the book the author seemed to know a hell of a lot. It was far better researched than any of his other work." Prentiss murmured thoughtfully.

"So he killed all those women to get famous for his writing?" Morgan's tone was incredulous.

"He wouldn't be the first one to kill for fame." Hotch murmured

"But then publishing it?" Morgan asked

"We'll find out when we catch him."

"He took Garcia…or his accomplice did…I'm going to kill him before he tells us anything." Morgan's voice was so low he could barely be heard.

"We all know how you feel, but that's not justice Morgan."

"Kinda not caring, we find them…we deal with them and if they've harmed a single hair on her head, they won't die quick." Morgan growled.

Hotch focused on Morgan, never having seen the calm agent so angry about a case before, but this was Garcia, and that changed the rules for him, for all of them. He jumped as his phone rang.

"The abandoned hotel at the closed resort." Reid said. "Go west out of town, and look for a sign for 'Smithson's Winter Cabins'."

"How reliable is the source?"

"The sister, Ruth…I have to get back to Eve, she's just woken up."


	14. Chapter 14

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in.

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.  
><strong>Anish Kapoor<strong> 

**Chapter 14**

The route to the hotel was hazardous and too overgrown to take the cars right up to the building. A plan had rapidly been sketched out on how to enter the place without risking the lives of Garcia and the young woman who the unsubs already had, if they were both still alive, and the team couldn't consider the idea that Penelope Garcia was gone. Moran's jaw was clenched so tight that everyone else in the car he was riding in could hear his teeth grinding. If Garcia was dead, then Morgan knew he would kill both unsubs, no matter what the consequences. Looking over to Hotch in the drivers seat, his face pale and set, he knew the other agent might as well be reading his mind and was already trying to figure out how to stop him. Morgan hoped Hotch realised there was no way.

They reached the hotel on foot, guns drawn, taking point silently at the spots they'd decided on in the cars. It seemed odd without Reid there, but it had made sense that he stayed with Eve, just in case they showed up there.

Morgan moved through the hotel, silently flanked by Prentiss and Hotch, eyes and ears open. It was quiet, punctuated by the sounds of the forest the half finished hotel had been swallowed up by. Then another sound drifted through the air, soft...the sound of begging, the voice familiar. Garcia! Morgan bit his lip to keep from calling her name, from blowing the whole thing apart, but as he heard his baby girl cry out, he couldn't take any more. Morgan covered the rest of the dark ruined corridor in what felt like a single, angry stride and kicked open the door.

Morgan saw Garcia, strung up and naked. There was still blood on the meat hook she was hanging from, and her arm was still bleeding where the IV had gone in, but her body hung limp, her cries silenced by the ketamine flowing into her system, only her dark eyes awake.

In one corner of the room, Chase Anderson appeared to be pawing the body of the other girl, who was obviously dying, her breath coming in slow rattling breaths, but at least she was still alive, the older man Jones, was looking over a tray of scalpels, like and artist looking over his brushes, a look of almost affection on his face as he chose a surgical blade and raised it, ready to cut into Garcia's pale skin. As Morgan entered the room, roaring his disgust, both men jerked to look at him, the blade tumbling from Jones' hand.

Hotch and Prentiss arrived a few seconds later, amazed by the level of brute force that Morgan had thrown at the door to get through. Morgan levelled his gun at Jones.

"Morgan no!" Hotch called. "You do this, you can't be around for her."

Morgan's firing hand wavered as Prentiss and Hotch moved to detain the unsubs, rendered cowardly by agents with guns and no chance of subduing them.

Morgan moved to Garcia as JJ arrived, calling an ambulance and watching as Morgan cut Garcia down, gathering her to him and desperately looking around for something to wrap her up in, his stomach turning as he saw only a length of blue tarpaulin, there was no way these girls were going to get out alive.

"Ambulances have been called, we're taking them in now. Morgan, Prentiss, stay with them until they arrive?" Hotch's tone brooked no argument, plus there was no way Morgan was going anywhere without Garcia. In fact as he held her, his fingers warming her ice cold skin, he knew he was never going anywhere without her again.

"It's OK Baby Girl, I got you."

N-Not me…" Garcia's voice forced through the drug haze. "Her…Needs you…both…dying…" Morgan looked down at Garcia for a long moment before moving to the other girl, not moving until the EMT's turned up.


	15. Chapter 15

I don't own Criminal Minds, just love it

Please read and review to keep me going, as this is my first CM fic, and all criticism will be taken on board in the spirit they are intended in.

This chapter will be short, just a nice creepy almost close about motives, and an apology that it took so long, I was stuck doing finals in school, sick and waiting on some things for my crappy ass job that killed my mojo.

OK votes for chapter 16- Garcia and Morgan's marriage, who wants a flashback and what do you guys want to happen with Eve and Reid

Fame is a fickle food upon a shifting plate.  
><strong>Emily Dickinson<strong> 

**Chapter 15**

Extract from a newspaper report following the convictions of Morgan Jones and Chase Anderson, around three months after the capture of the two unsubs.

'_The case of the serial killer who became known as 'The Sculptor' is one of the most shocking of recent times. His crimes have terrorised the small town he chose to use as a base for ten years and cost the lives of more than ten young women, and polluted the mind of one young man._

_However, America has had many killers in its history, this man is among the most frightening due to his reasons for committing these murders. Fame. In interviews with authorities Jones has stated his career as a none fiction writer had stalled, and after losing his home, he decided he needed something he could write about and serial killers sold best, 'the stranger the better'. Thus he became a man who hunted down, kidnapped, and carved up women, all the while submitting articles and even eventually a book, profiting from his own killings._

_The reason for his break is also easily explained. He has stated his money from the books and articles had dried up when interest had waned, though interest lasted longer due to him leaving a survivor from the first attacks. Deputy Eve Allison (now retired), the survivor of the earlier attacks has attended every day of the trial, accompanied by Agents Spencer Reid, Derek Morgan and Penelope Garcia-Morgan, who played key roles in the apprehension of the two defendants._

_Morgan Jones has been sentenced to death under Virginia State Law, Anderson has been sentenced to life without parole._


End file.
